Psalm 122:1-2

I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.

I like the way this program has begun which works well for my brain: we started with a panorama of the city today before delving into neighborhoods tomorrow. It helps me to orient the geography first and we did that by having lunch at a monastery that happens to be at a high point southwest of the walled city of Jerusalem. So after lunch we went up on the roof and got to take some great pictures, one of which I posted a few moments ago. We could look out not only at the city but the Kidron Valley as well and up to the Mount of Olives. Awesome. In addition to the visual we did a kind of "idiots guide" to the history of Jerusalem in about one hour, from King David to the present-day. Some bits were review but the review and the big picture help me lots before we get into the specifics.

Two little tid-bits from our dean today that speak to me. First, he said this: "when you first come to Israel you could write a book. If you stay a year, you could write a chapter. If you stay two years, you may write a sentence." It is a nice summary of how I am feeling at this moment. As I understood the comment in the context of this day it is that there is so much to see and feel and experience and you are tempted, as I am doing here, to write it all down. We stood on that rooftop at that monastery today and in fact just stood silently for about two minutes as he asked us to "listen to the city." An interesting exercise and I could very clearly hear the following: horns honking, a dog barking, a bird singing, children laughing on a playground. The smells and sounds are many and diverse enough to make one want to write a book. But it's so complex, so rich, that it's hard to get at it and the more you know the less you know. One example may suffice: Steven told us that the previous bishop here used to describe himself as a Palestinian-Arab, Anglican-Christian, Israeli. The point being that in the west we tend to filter everything here through Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Jew and yet the layers of complexity make that view in some ways completely false. Not all Palestinians are Muslims and Palestinians who were within the 1948 borders were made citizens of Israel. (Not so those who were in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golon Heights.) So the former bishop: Palestinian-Christian-Israeli, in one body! Just thinking about it makes pondering and reflecting for a while the wiser alternative than writing a book!

The second gem I have now heard twice in two days, but it goes like this: the rabbis taught that "when God gave ten measures of beauty to the world, nine were given to Jerusalem. And when God gave ten measures of sorrow to the world, nine were given to Jerusalem."

It is an extraordinary place. If you are reading this blog and following along, I would invite you to pay attention to the psalms, including the one referenced above. It is amazing how much they reference this city of beauty and sorrow, a city that can leave one (almost!) speechless.